Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  Of course, there were other ways to get knowledge – cajoling, persuading, getting people to talk about themselves; she knew, and had used, all of them – but sometimes a hairpin in the middle of the night was by far the best way.

  The door swung open. Not a scrap of moonlight was allowed into Miss Cairngrim’s office; it was as tightly shuttered as the woman herself. Eveline didn’t want to risk opening the shutters, in case of noise. She had brought a candle, which would have to do.

  She made her way methodically through the drawers of the desk, carefully returning every bit of paper and scrap of pencil where she found it. Miss Cairngrim’s tidiness made it all the easier – this would have been a lot harder in Ma Pether’s rooms, with everything all of a higgle-piggle. With some people you could trust they wouldn’t notice, but not with Ma Pether.

  She found a battered book with a blue cloth cover, full of figures. Accounts. Income. The main amount from someone or something called HMG; which, seeing a letterhead with the same initials, she realised was Her Majesty’s Government.

  The monthly stipend looked substantial, but it got eaten up fast. Clothes, food, teachers’ wages, soap... tiny obsessive figures in ever-smaller columns as Miss Cairngrim tried to stretch the money over the bills like thin pastry over too big a pie. Owed to butcher, 6s 5d. Owed to baker, 2s 9d. Eveline grinned to herself, wondering if the candlestick maker was in there, too. Then her head shot up as she heard a noise; something scraping the glass of the window, outside the shutters. Scree, scree.

  A branch shifted by the wind, nothing more; it was only the silence of the house made it seem so loud.

  Still, it was a warning she should heed. Well, Miss Cairngrim was short of money, that was interesting; a lever, if Eveline chose to use it and could find the means. But it told her nothing about Holmforth.

  Another drawer – more accounts. Another – a diary. Appointments and reminders listed in that same cramped, tiny hand. Speak to Mr M about books. Carstairs girl’s accusations – ridiculous. Carstairs girl? What Carstairs girl?

  Scree, scree, the branch went, scraping on the glass. Hurry up, Eveline.

  She sighed. Well, at least she knew a few things she hadn’t before, but whether any of it was the least use...

  Then her eye caught a fine line in the veneer of the desk, no more than a thread of light; if the candle hadn’t wavered, in the draft, she’d never have seen it. She’d seen such a thing before, in some of the furniture that had passed through Ma’s hands. If she was right, it was a secret drawer. A secret drawer for secret things.

  She felt about with careful, clever fingers, gently pulling and pushing, until a little ledge went click.

  The crack widened, showing darkness.

  Carefully, carefully, Eveline slid it open.

  Papers. Cuttings from The Times and the Illustrated London News. Men in top hats. Solemn civic occasions, posh social events. Lord Tracey meeting the trade delegation... Lord Silverman, Lord Fallwell and friends at the races...

  Who were all these people? Was Miss Cairngrim like one of those old ladies who kept every scrap and clipping about the royal family?

  But there seemed to be no connection, except that all the people shown were important persons of one sort or another. And here and there a face was ringed with blue ink.

  She held the lantern closer.

  There was something familiar about one of those faces. Lord Silverman...

  Lord Silverman looked an awful lot like Treadwell.

  Fascinated, Eveline studied the rest.

  She couldn’t see it in all of them, but in some, yes; the features of the daughters stamped upon the fathers, clear as day. And there was a Lord Donmar at a hunt ball, with his (presumably legitimate) daughter on his arm, her head adorned with feathers, jewels at her neck; her face a dead ringer for Hastings’.

  Well, well, well. So that was where the Britannia school got its pupils, was it? Maybe not all of them, but enough.

  It didn’t seem that Miss Cairngrim had stooped to blackmail, though. If she had, she wasn’t putting the takings into the school. Maybe she just liked to know. Eveline grinned to herself. Well, now she knew, too. She slid the drawer back.

  It stuck, one corner jutting accusingly.

  Eveline swore, jiggled the drawer this way and that, but it wouldn’t budge. She dipped her fingers in the hot candle-wax and rubbed it on the visible edges of the drawer, eased and pulled and prayed. Come on, you wretched, filthy thing!

  Finally, with treacherous suddenness, the drawer slid back into place, taking Evvie by surprise, making the table rock so the candle tilted dangerously. Eveline grabbed it before it could fall, hot wax spilling over her hand.

  Footsteps. Footsteps right outside the door.

  Eveline’s heart jumped into her throat. She pushed the drawer smoothly shut, pinched the candle out with her fingers so it wouldn’t betray her with the smell of smoke.

  The room was instantly, utterly dark. Eveline crept towards where she remembered the faded sofa standing, knowing she could wriggle behind it and hide, and ran straight into something that drove a brutal corner into her shinbone. She bit down hard on the swearword that sprang up, reached down and rubbed her leg briskly. She couldn’t feel any blood, at least.

  A light under the door; pale and wavering. A candle. But it didn’t stop, and nor did the footsteps. They went on.

  Who – or who else – was wandering about at this time of night? The water closets were upstairs, it couldn’t be that.

  Eveline backed away from the vicious table and relit her candle. Quickly, she made sure the drawers she had opened were all tightly locked, that everything looked the same as when she had entered. Then she unlocked the door, snuffed her candle again, and crept out into the corridor.

  The other light was wavering, away towards the kitchens. She pulled the door shut, the click of the latch sounding very loud. She had to lock it again, or Miss Cairngrim would guess someone had been in. She took a deep breath, clenched her jaw, and then relaxed it. Impatience never sped a lock yet, that was what Ma Pether had taught her.

  Carefully, she relocked it, the snick of the tongue like a breaking glass in the stillness.

  The light was out of sight, but a glimmer could still be seen on the walls. Never one to turn down a chance at knowing something someone didn’t want her knowing, Eveline followed it.

  She got close enough to see that the lamp-carrier was Treadwell, the bright halo of her curls yellow as butter in the lamplight. Well, well, so she wasn’t all piety and tale-telling after all. What was she about, at this time of night?

  Eveline had learned her way about by now. Treadwell was heading towards the forbidden area where the staff slept. She wasn’t hurrying, though; in fact, the closer she got, the slower her footsteps went.

  She reached a door, the one all by itself at the end of the corridor, and stopped. For a long moment she only stood there, then slowly, like someone in a bad dream who can’t stop whatever is happening to them, she turned the handle, and went in.

  The room was Monsieur Duvalier’s.

  A moment later came the sound of the key being turned in the lock.

  Eveline did not need to listen any longer to guess what came next. She made her way carefully and silently back to the dormitory and back to her bed without waking anyone, and lay there with one ear open, slipping in and out of dreams of flapping curtains in broken windows and dead leaves rustling across dusty floors. Eventually, with dragging steps, Treadwell came back. Eveline heard her get into bed.

  Then she heard her crying.

  Bon-bons, indeed, she thought. Don’t think I want any of your bon-bons, Monsewer Duvalier.

  She was tired, but now she couldn’t sleep; her head was full of confused, angry thoughts, like a storm trapped in its clouds. Treadwell stopped crying and fell asleep. Eveline huffed and sighed to herself, angrily shoving the thin pillow about as though battering it might relieve her feelings. Well, now she knew something she hadn’t
, but she wished she didn’t know it. She didn’t like Treadwell. She didn’t want to feel sorry for her.

  But she didn’t feel sorry for Monsewer Duvalier. Oh, no. Monsewer Duvalier had something coming to him, and if she could, Eveline would take great pleasure in being the one who brought it.

  WEEKS PASSED. EVELINE discovered the horrors of French verb construction, the use of the parasol both to shade the complexion and wind an opponent, and the many ways in which a young woman could be made to look like an old one, or a man, or a foreigner. She made good progress in Retention, very slight progress in Cantonese (her fingers were constantly bruised from Wen Hsu’s stick), even less in Navigation, and none whatsoever with her mother’s mechanisms. Sometimes she managed to raise a wheeze or a dreadful catlike yowling from one of them, sometimes a growl. The only noticeable effect it had was to send Mr Jackson complaining to Miss Cairngrim that he could not work with such a dreadful noise going on. Considering the constant hammering and clanging that he engaged in on his Velocitator, and the way he shouted during his occasional, half-hearted attempts at teaching, Eveline considered this more than a little unfair. She even asked his advice about the Etheric mechanisms, but his only response was to call them superstitious rubbish intended to fool the credulous, and tell her she would be better off paying attention to her stitching.

  She lived in dread of Holmforth’s next visit.

  She attempted to distract herself with gathering all the knowledge she could about the school and its inhabitants, though after dark she kept her explorations to the main building. The dogs that ran loose in the grounds at night were a thoroughly nasty pair of animals controllable only by Thomas, their monosyllabic and odorous keeper. During the day they were chained up in the laundry yard, and hanging the washing was a task all the girls hated, living in dread that one day the chains would break as the vile animals barked and lunged and drooled within feet of them.

  It was a rambling place, built for a large family and at least a dozen servants. Twenty girls and half as many staff did little to fill it. Half the rooms on the east side were shut off, and a smell of damp came from them which was only slightly more pervasive than that which filled the rest of the building.

  When a carriage pulled up at the house for the third time in as many days and Eveline’s heart climbed into her throat for fear it might be Holmforth, she realised there was only one thing for it. She had to get her mother’s notes.

  If they still existed. If James or whoever came after him hadn’t found them.

  The house would have gone to strangers now. She just prayed it hadn’t been knocked down.

  It would be hard to do it alone. Not the robbery, about that she’d no qualms. It wasn’t even robbery, strictly speaking; she’d only be taking back what was hers.

  Getting out of the school and back in, though, that was a whole other business.

  Eveline began to think very hard.

  “MR WEN HSU IS UNWELL. We have a replacement.” Miss Cairngrim frowned. “He is very young. I had hoped for another respectable gentleman of mature years, but I suppose we will have to make do. He does come on personal recommendation. Necessary, of course, in a place such as this. You will be exposed to a great deal of temptation, Duchen, especially when mingling with foreigners. Regard this as an opportunity to practise keeping a proper distance at all times.”

  “Yes, Miss Cairngrim.” Eveline wondered, again, whether she should tell her about Treadwell and Monsewer... but she was pretty certain that if she did so, she wouldn’t be believed. She had a feeling she knew what the Carstairs girl’s ‘ridiculous accusations’ had been.

  She made her way to the small, chilly room where her Cantonese lessons took place, hoping she wouldn’t have to deal with any silliness. Miss Cairngrim couldn’t be any more eager for there to be none of that nonsense than she herself was.

  She knocked on the door, and pushed it open.

  “Zǎoshàng hǎo, Lady Sparrow.”

  Seated on the table, grinning and wearing a robe of dark blue embroidered silk and a small round cap, was Liu.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Eveline said.

  “Now, Miss Duchen, that shows no respect at all for your venerable teacher,” he said. “I hope you are well?”

  “I will be soon’s I’m over the shock. Liu, what are you up to?”

  “I am here to teach you Cantonese, of course.”

  “But you work for the Brighart Steam Transport Company!”

  “And where is it written that a man must have one job all his life?” Liu dropped neatly to the ground. “What are you doing here, Lady Sparrow?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m learning things. ’Sa school. That’s what you do in school, is learn things.”

  “I will be a far better teacher of Cantonese than my predecessor, who no doubt bruised your fingers and gave you very boring lessons.”

  “Sure of yourself, aren’t you? How’d you get taken on?”

  “Now, Lady Sparrow, do you really expect me to reveal all my tricks? We know each other better than that, yes?”

  “I don’t know you at all. Are you a spy?”

  He paused in the act of taking a scroll out of his sleeve, and looked at her with his head tilted a little to the side. “Not really,” he said. “Are you loyal to your Empress, Lady Sparrow?”

  “Well, she’s paying my clothes, board and education, so I s’pose I’d better be.”

  “Then we are in a very similar situation. However, my Empress and yours are not at odds, so I see no reason why it should concern us in the slightest. Shall we learn some words? I know much more interesting ones than the old man. I can tell you the secret names of all of the river dragons.”

  “I’m not listening to a thing until you tell me what you’re doing here.”

  He propped himself back on the table, swinging his legs. “I was bored,” he said. “I wanted to see you. I thought we were friends. Don’t you want to be friends, Lady Sparrow?”

  “Are you going to get me into trouble?”

  “I don’t plan to,” he said. “In fact, if there is trouble, I may help you avoid it. I’m good at that.”

  Eveline laughed. “Coming here don’t look like avoiding trouble to me. Well if you can get me as good at Cantonese as you are at English, I’ll be grateful – but you’d better not tell anyone you know me, or we’ll both be for it. I still don’t know how the hell you found me.”

  “I told you before,” he said. “I am exceptionally clever.”

  “Or why.”

  “Because you interest me. I think you are clever, too – maybe even as clever as I am.”

  He was certainly a better teacher than the old man – in among the joking and teasing, she made more progress in one hour than she had in weeks. Maybe it was just because he explained instead of cracking her on the hand, or maybe it was because he didn’t seem to despise her the way her former teacher did. “The one who was here before, he always acted like he thought I smelled bad,” she said.

  “You do not smell bad.”

  “I didn’t think I did. He smelled a bit himself. But he looked at me like I was stuck to his shoe. ’Sfunny: I got used to that, before, but now it proper narks me.” She laughed. “I must be turning respectable.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t let it trouble you. If someone thinks one is nothing, there is more satisfaction in proving them wrong, is there not?”

  “If you say so,” she said. He was right, of course. There was far more satisfaction in ripping off someone who treated you like dirt. But although he knew her for a thief, she didn’t feel inclined to remind him of it.

  “In China, women are not much valued, and their education very limited. To have to teach a woman, and a gweilo at that...”

  “A what?”

  “Gweilo. It is an insulting word for someone who is not Chinese. He must have needed the work very badly. Or perhaps the people who run things here knew something about him that he coul
d not afford to get out.”

  “Maybe he was a spy,” Eveline said.

  “Possibly. But what does it matter? He is gone. As to the smell – yes. He was taking opium. It affects the bowels. That teacher of yours, the one who looks as though she were left in the sun too long? She too is taking opium.”

  “Oh, Miss Prayne! She’s a miserable thing, I’d not be surprised if she drinks laudanum like it was tea.”

  “Does she drink it because she is miserable, or is she miserable because she drinks it? I do not like opium. People go into dreams, and some of them never come out.”

  “Don’t see that it’s worse than gin.”

  “And you have seen what gin can do.”

  “Oh, I seen that all right.”

  His mobile, lively face saddened. “I have seen many, many people sicken and lose everything and die from opium. You know your Empire sells a great deal of opium to my country.”

  “I seen plenty of people lose everything and sicken and die without needing opium, just out of being poor.” She shrugged. “And that or gin, it takes ’em out of themselves. If all you got is a clenching belly and grinding hard work when you can get it, you need something to get you through the day.”

  Her mother had never drunk. Her mother had worked. But even that had been taken from her.

  “What is it?” Liu said, searching her face.

  “Nothing. You’d better be careful what you say about the Empire, round here, though. This place is all for the Empire, and Her Maj, and all.”

  “Her Maj?”

  “The Queen. The Empress.”

  “Her Maj does not sound very respectful,” he said.

  “And are you always respectful about your Empress?”

  “When there is any chance she might hear of it, yes.”

  “I see. So are you going to tell on me?”

  “How could I possibly do that, when my English is certainly not good enough to know when you are being disrespectful?”

  They grinned at each other.

  EVELINE CAME OUT of the lesson and paused in the corridor, watching the darkening green sweep of the lawn as the trees laid long shadows over it.